KUALA LUMPUR: Perodua has led the Malaysian auto market for over a decade, but the Rawang-based carmaker is showing no signs of complacency. On the product front, Perodua has just launched its best and most homegrown model yet in the 2018 Myvi, and with a full year of Myvi sales to look forward to, the company is looking at a 2-3% growth in sales this year.
The 2018 outlook was shared by Perodua president and CEO Datuk Aminar Rashid Salleh on this morning’s BFM 89.9 Breakfast Grille. At the same time, the P2 chief says that 3-4% growth in total industry volume (TIV) for this year is possible. In 2016, Perodua sold 207,100 cars and recorded its highest ever market share of 35.7%. Moving forward, the company is not expecting much upside when it comes to market share. “If you look at the domestic market, we are about to reach maturity. 35%, it’s going to be tough going beyond that,” Aminar said, adding that the one million units TIV by 2020 bandied about some time ago by the Malaysian Automotive Institute (MAI) is “challenging”.
While the carmaker fully understands the responsible lending policy by the central bank and Malaysian banks, it wishes for more flexibility from lenders. Perodua has already been instructing sales personnel to not just collect as many bookings as possible, but to do some filtering of customers, in terms of their financial profile and capability. Higher quality submissions should improve loan approval ratings from the banks. Typically, ACBs and RCBs have better financial standing that FTBs. Exports is a question the media regularly throws at Perodua, and Aminar has always been consistent. “Export is not an easy business. It’s still something that we are learning. We want to bring ourselves more to global standards and hopefully that will be a launching pad for us to look slightly more into the export market,” he said, admitting that P2 has been focused on the domestic market.
